page_title: Trayvon Martin
section_title: 2012
hierarchical_section_title: Trayvon Martin / Aftermath and media discourse / 2012
caption_attribution_description: English: Photos from the Million Hoodies Union Square protest against Trayvon Martin's shooting death in Sanford, Florida.
context_page_description: Trayvon Benjamin Martin was a 17-year-old African-American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida by George Zimmerman. Martin had gone with his father on a visit to his father's fiancée at her townhouse at The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford. On the evening of February 26, Martin was walking back alone to the fiancée's house from a nearby convenience store. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, saw Martin and reported him to the Sanford Police as suspicious. Several minutes later, there was an altercation and Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.
  Zimmerman was injured during the encounter and stated he had been defending himself; he was not charged at the time. The police said there was no evidence to refute his claim of self-defense, and that Florida's stand your ground law prohibited them from arresting or charging him. After national media focused on the incident, Zimmerman was eventually charged and tried, but the jury acquitted him of second-degree murder and manslaughter in July 2013.
  Martin was born in Miami, Florida, and attended both Norland Middle School and Highland Oaks Middle School, in north Miami-Dade County, Florida.
context_section_description: Martin's parents, upset that an arrest had not been made in their son's death, contacted Martin's sister-in-law, an attorney who put them in touch with Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney from Tallahassee, Florida. Crump took their case pro bono and retained Natalie Jackson, an attorney familiar with Sanford and Seminole County who specialized in women's and children's cases, to help with the Martin case. On March 5, Jackson asked Ryan Julison to help as well. A publicist, Julison initially approached several national media contacts about covering the shooting. Over the next few days and weeks, the national media started reporting on the shooting, including: Reuters, CBS This Morning, ABC World News and CNN. The Miami Herald reported that in the 30 days following the shooting, the name Trayvon was tweeted more than two million times.
  On March 8, Kevin Cunningham, a social media coordinator who had read about Martin's death, created a petition on Change.org, which became the largest in the website's history a few weeks later with 2.2 million signatures. Cunningham said he started the online petition demanding that authorities prosecute Zimmerman and when the number of signatures reached 10,000, he transferred the petition to Martin's parents after Change.org contacted him. Cunningham was the media coordinator for KinderUSA, and said he fell in love with social media during the Egyptian revolution and was inspired by the death of Khaled Said. He thought Martin's death could be a similar situation where the death of one person could trigger a reevaluation of society, and revolutionize the justice system and the culture.
  After the death of Martin, the media focus on the case was instrumental in developing a national debate about racial profiling and self-defense laws, with marches and rallies held across the United States. One of the larger rallies, called the "Million Hoodie March" was held in Manhattan's Union Square in New York City on March 21. People wore hoodies to symbolize their support for Martin, and against profiling used against non-white youths in hoodies. According to Salon, close to five thousand people attended the March, while other media outlets estimated the supporters to be in the hundreds. Martin's parents spoke at the event and many of the participants at the event were Occupiers who had been evicted the night before from Union Square and returned for the March.
  At a White House press conference in March, President Obama was asked about the Martin shooting, and said, "If I had a son he would look like Trayvon and I think they [his parents] are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves." Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate at the time, said that a full inquiry was needed so that "justice could be carried out with impartiality and integrity". The Project for Excellence in Journalism reported in March that media coverage of the Martin case had become the first news story in 2012 to be reported on more than the presidential race.
  In June, Martin's parents and members of the Second Chance on Shoot First campaign, delivered a petition with 340,000 signatures to the Citizen Safety and Protection task force asking for changes to the stand-your-ground law in Florida. Governor Rick Scott had established the task force after Martin's death to review and make recommendations about the law. Florida was the first state to pass a law that allowed an individual who felt threatened to stand their ground. Joëlle Anne Moreno, a former federal prosecutor, who was part of the task force said it was "clear that there was lots of confusion around the statute". Marion Hammer, a National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbyist and former NRA president who had helped write Florida's law, said the law was not about one incident and there was nothing wrong with the law. The task force eventually recommended against repealing the statute, saying that Florida residents had a right to defend themselves with deadly force without a duty to retreat if they feel threat
caption: Photo from the 'Million Hoodie March' in Union Square
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